05/29/2023
I quit my role at Canva to launch my design agency, but it wasn’t exactly as I hoped…
When I started freelancing, I thought I’d spend all my time designing. Turns out, ya girl traded stakeholder management as a product manager, for double the client management at Mapo 😂
What did I miss? Project-scoping, client comms, design processes, accounting, contracts, selling, marketing and more.
Soooo let me help you skip a few steps, these are the subscriptions I pay monthly (not incl. salaries).
My Agency Stack
| ✨: we absolutely need it | 👌: would be annoying without it |
Design Tooling: Total = $66/mo
✨ Figma ($36/mo): Internal design files for just 2 editors, client designs are worked on in their figgy files
✨ Webflow ($20/mo): Our design studio website (https://www.mapo.studio/), and for custom website builds
👌 Framer ($10/mo): Our design workflow tools (https://www.mapo.team), and for simple + quick website builds
👌 Canva (Free): Marketing templates for clients
Operations Tooling: Total = $603/mo
✨ Notion ($12/mo): Task tracker, sales tracker, client docs/briefs
✨ G-Suite ($10/mo): Email, calendar
✨ Xero ($29/mo): Bookkeeping
✨ GoDaddy & Namecheap, Inc ($10/mo): Company domains
✨ Careerly (Free, in beta): Feedback & performance tracker (great for distributed teams like mine!)
👌 Beany.com ($219/mo): Accounting & tax advice (or Hnry for sole traders)
👌 Discord ($11/mo): Team comms (or Slack)
👌 Cake (Free): Founder/advisor equity
👌 WeWork ($325/mo): Office subscription
I spend ~$670 AUD every month to run my design studio with 4 people (not incl. salaries). It's a low fixed monthly cost 8 months in, and if you're starting as a freelancer the free version of these tools will work just fine!
It took me months transitioning from DIY everything as a one-woman team to implementing processes that gives me time to do more of what I love, design!
Follow me to read more about my design agency f*** ups so you can avoid them 😂